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Imperial College London – Case Study 1

EXTREME NETWORKS CASE STUDY: IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON

Leading Academic Institution Approaches

London-Wide Carrier-Class, Policy Driven

Multivendor Network

Serving 20,000 Students and Staff Mobility, secure network policy and highavailability delivered through an efficient network design have characterized

Imperial College London’s extensive campus network upgrade featuring scalable

Ethernet network solutions from Extreme Networks.

Imperial College London required the roll-out of an enhanced mobile edge network

using best-of-breed equipment to complete its transition to supporting IPV6,

wired/wireless, converged voice/video and devices that require power from the

network. The scale of the project demanded upgraded performance and increased

visibility through advanced network management and the many benefits of an

open and modular operating system, ExtremeXOS®.

Distinguished Education Institution Builds

World-Class NetworkImperial College London, consistently ranked as one of the world’s best universities,

is a science-driven academic institution with a globally renowned reputation for

excellence in teaching and research. Serving more than 20,000 students and staff

across seven campuses and eight teaching hospitals throughout west London, its

extended campus network is a vital component for its mission in delivering world

class academic, teaching and support over both wired and wireless.

In 2011, Imperial College London is completing an ambitious, behind-the-scenes

network upgrade with the mission of building a network for the future of mobility

and increased reliance on the Internet. The project includes centralisation of the

network and measurable performance upgrades that help to meet the longer-

term demands of the university’s growth in both services delivered and student

requirements that are served.

A core objective of the project has also been to simplify the management of the

edge network and integrate it into a single centrally managed entity. The benefit is

consistent services, ease of change and low impact to the IT staff.

“We’re effectively operating fully converged carrier-grade Ethernet, with different

classes of users and data across a metropolitan-sized area,” explained Matthew

Williams, Head of Networks and Infrastructure, ICT, Imperial College London. “User

Imperial College London Takes

on the Future with Large-scaleNetwork Upgrade Featuring

Mobility, Security and IPv6

HIGHLIGHTS

THE CHALLENGE

Completing an ambitious, behind-the-scenes network upgrade with

the mission of building a network for

the future of mobility and increased

reliance on the Internet and to

simplify the management of the edge

network and integrate it into a single

centrally managed entity.

THE SOLUTION

Upgrade performance and increase

visibility through advanced network

management and the many benefits

of an open and modular operatingsystem, ExtremeXOS®.

THE BENEFITS

• Secure wired and wireless network

infrastructure for users and devices.

• Consistent and predictable services

meet mobility needs of 20,000

students.

• Single network OS means less time

and cost operating network for IT staff.

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Imperial College London – Case Study 2

types include staff, students and support services, and the

network is subject to the many, varied demands from teaching

hospitals and research. The sheer amount of data that is stored,

accessed and transferred is one aspect, but the rise in use of

mobile devices such as smartphones, netbooks and iPads, which

consume bandwidth browsing the web and running applications,

as well as the move to cloud based services, have also placed a

greater strain on the network.”

Network Policy for a Secure Mobile

Student Network

Security is a core aspect to the resilience and management of

any large public sector network, driven by uniform network

policy and control. The scope and scale of the College’s

converged network, in comparison to a traditional in-house

network, placed even greater emphasis on security measures at

the network edge. Management tools, therefore, needed to be

centrally accessible and intuitive to provide high visibility into the

network to instantly detect threats and monitor usage.

“The scale of our operations means we have to have an intelligent

and mobile network that we can manage from anywhere and

that also dynamically identifies users and devices as they log on

to the network,” explained Williams. “In terms of management

we have our own DHCP, MAC database and in-house SNMP.

Manageability is key: Extreme Networks infrastructure can

support user and port policy all within the context of our existing

management framework.”

Continued Williams: “We made sure that we secured automated

threat detection and response instrumentation to accompany

the hardware. This will ensure that the appropriate response to

network intrusion is centrally available and can be incorporated

into continuity planning.”

Advanced IPV6 and Predictable

Network Performance

As a large-scale public sector project, the search for value was at

the forefront of the decision process for Imperial College London.

The university was keen to achieve stringent performance

benchmarks with network resilience, additional security features

to support converged LAN, 48.8 Gbps – 97.6 Gbps switch fabric

bandwidth, 65.5 Mpps – 72.6 Mpps Layer 2 and IPv4/IPv6 packet

forwarding rate, and convergence grade 40 Gbps stacking.

Delivery and uptime had to be watertight.

IPV6 and IPv4 technologies naturally were required to besupported in all Ethernet switches, to ensure the smooth support

of thousands of Internet connected devices and an array of

advanced network services.

“We selected Extreme Networks equipment as the core of the

network edge upgrade project in a formal public sector process

that started with a tender in the Official Journal of the European

Union. Selection was competitive and objectively based on

technical deliverables and cost,” explained Williams. “The project

is now delivering what the College required: secure mobility,

reliability and flexibility. The network is now something that

everyone can take for granted. It’s like your power supply: it’s

there, it works and you can plug in to it whenever and wherever

you are.”

The Imperial Implementation

Central to the project has been the upgrade to converged carrier

Ethernet capacity, a process now approaching completion. More

than a thousand Extreme Networks switches are being used to

complete the project, featuring the Summit® X450 and Summit

X250 models. The evolution of Imperial network has demanded

a careful and methodical approach to replacing layers of the

network. It has to account for pre-existing capabilities and

features of the equipment to ensure continuous support.

“The reason for the project’s success is the fact that it was not

an exercise in wholesale replacement but a carefully planned

and ordered move. The edge upgrade is the culmination of a

deliberate process of managed roll-out that we initiated in 2007,”

said Williams. “It was not a ‘big bang’ project – but we have

made the transition smoothly and decisively, without disruption,

from a decentralised model to a centralised one, improving

performance drastically, whilst building on existing standards

and equipment.”

“The project is now delivering what the College required: secure mobility, reliability and flexibility. The network is

now something that everyone can take for granted. It’s like

 your power supply: it’s there, it works and you can plug in

to it whenever and wherever you are.” 

MATTHEW WILLIAMS, HEAD OF NETWORKS

AND INFRASTRUCTURE ICT, IMPERIAL

COLLEGE LONDON